Heather Wilson, secretary of the U.S. Air Force, has said the service branch’s pilots will test-fly four aircraft in various combat mission scenarios at Holloman AF Base in New Mexico next week as part of the Light Attack Experimentation Campaign.
The Air Force said Tuesday it will evaluate an A-29 Super Tucano from the Embraer–Sierra Nevada Corp. team and an AT-802 Longsword from the Air Tractor–L3 Technologies alliance, as well as Scorpion and AT-6 Wolverine platforms from Textron.
“The light attack aircraft experiment took five months from conception to aircraft delivery,” Wilson told audience at an Air Force Association event held Tuesday in Arlington, Virginia.
Wilson added the service branch aims to establish an agile and flexible environment and accelerate analyst processing, assessment and decisionmaking in space command and control operations with the use of open architecture systems.
The service branch has begun to explore innovation ideas that involve input from academia and industry.
The Air Force also plans to create a new Deputy Chief of Staff for Space Operations directorate — or A11– to support the integration of space programs and appoint a senior civilian who will serve as the directorate’s assistant deputy chief of staff.
